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Delighted clients – how would you know?

I was considering this question not long ago in conversation with a client. We were looking at what the firm could measure to show that their clients were delighted and the firm was being successful at what they did. We came up with a whole range of ideas – not exhaustive, of course – which went beyond the revenue measure. Whilst important, this is in itself a crude measure, because it doesn’t tell you much about why that revenue came to you and how profitable it is.

Nor does it really fully represent “success”.The kinds of things we decided would show that you had delighted clients were as follows. (Of course, the question remains, how do you get the data easily to demonstrate this – the subject of another blog which you can read here).

increase in wallet share from client

increase in profitability over time if more products/services introduced

increase in potential lifetime value: to measure LTV you need revenue, duration of the relationship, costs

recommendations to other companies, prompted and unprompted

more contact (phone, face-to-face)

more “definitely agrees” on client surveys (the difference between a 4/5 and 5/5 is a lot in terms of client loyalty)

decrease in number of lost clients (at least for reasons other than bankruptcy, merger, etc)

greater knowledge about client because they are more willing to share information

greater involvement with client at strategic or business level (partnership relationship)

cost of client acquisition decreases (if brand works, if we excel at what we do and are recommended to others)

highly rated on any client satisfaction index: each factor weighted according to how important the client sees that aspect of service

client’s experience of us at different points and with different people is consistently high